SOURCE: A review of The Venerable Bead, in Kirkus Reviews. Vol. LX, No. 18, September 15, 1992, p. 1144.

Below, the critic briefly summarizes the major themes of The Venerable Bead.

Galloping satire whose hairpin turns can be followed only by God (the Bible) and Condon (The Manchurian Candidate, etc. etc.), and one of those may still be in the dark.

Condon veterans will brace themselves for the same gaudy density of higgledy-piggledly jokery that filled 1991's The Final Addiction—but this time Condon outdoes himself. Set in the early 70's, [The Venerable Bead] finds the Commie menace in full bloom. Any theme laid bare by the book's readers, however, may well suddenly be swallowed like oyster meat by another theme. One leading theme is about polymorphous human appearances, a subject that at last gets so complicated that one loses track of which physical body the heroine is wearing—as does her...